"Tortured Little Dude"The Painful Self-Awareness of Paloma and Jepsen

Tara Jepsen’s novel, LIKE A DOG, centers around a skateboarder in her early thirties, Paloma, and her relationship with her brother Peter—an opiate addict. From the get go, we, the readers, tread lightly around Peter as she, the sister, witnesses his slow demise--overdosing here and there, going in and out of rehab only to keep using again.

Paloma, however, is not your run-of-the-mill woman—she's a skater who can definitely do more than ollie and execute a boneless; she lives for skating pools. And these days skating seems to be the only thing she and Peter share.

When the book opens, they're on their way to Yucca Valley to skate a pool. Peter is sober and Paloma hopes this time it sticks because “Peter is such a jerk when he’s on dope." This is the main tension of the book: Will he or won't he?

Paloma’s self-awareness stems from overthinking and being critical of herself, but she has such a witty way of observing things that even as you feel her pain, you have to laugh...

What immediately struck me about Paloma was her self-awareness and ability to open up to the reader in frequent observations about herself. This is not just an comment about Paloma, but also about Jepsen. It’s clear that she knows her character—and knows her well. Jepsen’s ability to eloquently tell you what’s going in Paloma’s head had me thinking, “Yes! I feel the same way, but why couldn’t I have thought to say it that way?” Sometimes, it was even more a “Yes, I feel the same way, but why didn't I know I even felt that way until Paloma told me that’s how she feels?” Intense.

Paloma’s self-awareness stems from overthinking and being critical of herself, but she has such a witty way of observing things that even as you feel her pain, you have to laugh--like when she tells the story of being alone in the house and she heard someone break in. She was terrified, but she also had to pee, so she goes to the bathroom even though she knows the intruder will hear her. She explains that her “ability to compartmentalize was at dissociative, mafia levels.”

As we navigate through Paloma’s present, we flashback to scenes that—as a testament to Jepsen—never become confusing. Often they are stream of consciousness—yet even then they're comical, relevant and clear, despite Paloma’s fast thinking.

During one of my favorite flashbacks, Paloma and her friend Irma have drinks and the waitress looks like Olivia Johns, Paloma’s childhood nemesis. This triggers a flashback to her youth with Olivia and the ridiculous beefs she had against Paloma, which were “all class-based." Even back in time, observations from little Paloma are self-aware, conscious of her surroundings, and hilarious—though you know that while it was happening, it was a horrible moment in her life.

Tara Jepsen

​Jepsen gives Paloma a clear and distinct voice, with a sarcasm that pours out, except when Paloma is confessing and complaining about her softness—that burden that comes with being a woman. “Soft” is a word Paloma uses to describe herself over and over again. She is divided by the hate she feels being a woman and the love she has being a woman.

At one point she launches into this wonderful rant: “I just feel like there’s this vast, gaping psychic vulnerability to being a woman. I don’t want to soften more than I am. There is a precarious balance between how much I want to take care of everyone I ever meet, and how much I want to smash my body into concrete by skateboarding my life away.”

​This thought is raw, revelatory, eloquent, beautiful, and also sad, because the person who’s thinking this seems to be capable of anything, yet you don’t know where Paloma’s life is going. You want her to get out of this slump she is in, especially as she wonders, “Is this life? You just feel bad sometimes and good sometimes and then you’re always doing something except when you’re sleeping?”

---SPOILER---

Tortured by overanalyzing and over-feeling, it’s interesting to see Paloma’s mind nearly shut down when Peter dies at the end. After his death, she begins to go through the motions of life in a cinematic way, distancing herself from her pain. She becomes “internal and sad” and takes up stand-up comedy as a way to manage and process.While Jepsen’s writing is phenomenally sardonic and raw, I was disappointed I didn’t get to see Paloma change significantly in the course of the book. Even before Peter’s death, she wasn’t really engaged with her own life. Perhaps she gave up years earlier as a result of having been raised by alcoholic parents. We don’t really know.

We assume there’s a change coming after Peter’s death, but we don’t get to witness it, and I even question if maybe there would be such a change. We end only with her hoping she there is a dark comedy open mic where she can make light of the situation.

Although I enjoyed the LIKE A DOG immensely, I don’t know how much more I could’ve taken of Paloma, the thirty-something-year-old who is—literally—just skating by. Still, Jepsen masterfully maneuvers through present, past, and timeless stream of consciousness with writing that flawlessly and precisely delivers troubled characters. In Paloma, she gives us a character so real, self-aware, and tortured, that even when it hurts to read, you keep going—like Paloma.

​Rebeca Ladrón de Guevara lives in Los Angeles, California. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University. Her fiction has previously appeared in Chicago Literati, Genre, Sonora Review and Badlands Literary Journal. Her poetry has appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry, Ekphrastic Review and the anthology ANTHEM: A TRIBUTE TO LEONARD COHEN.​https://www.facebook.com/rebeca.ladrondeguevararebecaladrondeguevara.wordpress.com